Bookend
Bookbuyer
The danger of having a warehouse fifty miles away from the sales, trade and editorial departments is that often the left hand doesn't know what the right foot is doing. Macmillans were surprised to discover from Bookbuyer that their lead non-fiction work of the Spring, Brigid Brophy's Prancing Novelist, has been on sale in Better Books in Charing Cross Road for the past week — beginning seventeen days before publication. Bookbuyer phoned Better Books who have had a window display of Prancing Novelist — all £8 and eight pounds of it — to be told that they were already out of stock and had more on order. This will please Macmillans in one way: it shows the book is likely to sell a moderate number of copies. They had grave doubts earlier, because Miss Brophy attempts in her massive work to harness a whole theory of the novel to poor Firbank — which is a bit like tying a millstone round a fairy and hoping it will swim.
People at Hodders seem to be cautiously satisfied with the appointment of Michael Attenborough as managing director in place of Robin Denniston who has gone to Weidenfeld. He comes from successfully managing the paperback side which is making a lot of money, and knows the American market well. He will have to take on more editorial responsibility than he has in the past — develop, that is to say, from being a manager into being a publisher — but for a family ' appointment it's better than outsiders might expect. There are slight signs of relaxation in the family grip on Hodder and Stoughton. Until the middle of 1971 all of the holding company board came from the Attenborough and Hodder-Williams family. Now there are five members of the family and three outsiders, including Ronald Read who comes in place of Robin Denniston.
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